Noir City at the Egyptian
The Breaking Point - Michael Curtiz (1950)
This underrated film by the great Michael Curtiz is an adaptation of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. It’s not much of a surprise that the success of the Bogart/Bacall version overwhelmed this film’s chances of reaching a large audience during its initial theatrical release. However, like the cinematheque, I agree that The Breaking Point is easily the superior of the two films. Curtiz’s thriller is classic noir - suspenseful, emotional, thrilling. John Garfield stars in his best performance and Patricia Neal steals the show as the dangerous and tempting female interest. The Breaking Point is one of Curtiz’s best films, with an emotionally wrenching and tragic ending that is nothing short of classic.
Cry of the City - Robert Siodmak (1948)
Robert Siodmak is the director of maybe my favorite noir, The Killers, as well as classics Criss Cross (with Burt Lancaster) and The Spiral Staircase. While Cry of the City doesn’t quite match the excellence of his finest work, it still manages to successfully entertain and move its audience. The two leads are part of what make this film so attractive. It doesn’t get much better than having both Victor Mature and Richard Conte star in a film-noir. The characters grew up in the same neighborhood of New York, each taking opposite directions in life once becoming adults. Mature is the cop, Conte the criminal. Both performances are great, especially in the final showdown that concludes the film.
The Crimson Kimono - Sam Fuller (1959)
Sam Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono is a lesser film for the director of such accomplishments as The Big Red One, House of Bamboo, and Forty Guns, but it has its charm in places. What distinguished this film from the rest of the noir of the period was its presentation of a relationship between a Japanese man and an American woman. Unlike many films at the time, the Japanese characters were not one-dimensional, paper-thin stereotypes. The police officer played by James Shigeta is realistically written and performed - the main highlight of what becomes a fairly standard, predictable, even tedious police thriller. Shigeta and his partner (Glenn Corbett) search for a killer in the streets of LA’s Little Tokyo and wind up falling in love with their main witness. The love triangle is silly, but the performances keep you invested. The on-location photography is excellent.
Pickup on South Street - Sam Fuller (1953)
A far superior noir by Sam Fuller starring one of the genre’s greatest icons: Richard Widmark. The story involves a pickpocket (Widmark) who steals a highly valuable piece of microfilm from Communist spies. His life is turned upside down immediately, with Federal Agents and the criminals hot on his tail. Along the way he develops a relationship with one of the spy’s mistresses (the woman he lifted the microfilm from) while attempting to collect the total value of the item. One of Fuller’s most entertaining thrillers.
The Killing - Stanley Kubrick (1956)
Kubrick’s feature length debut is one of the seminal heist films ever made. Sterling Hayden plans a brilliant robbery of a race track holding over two million dollars with a small crew of desperate criminals. Unfortunately this crew includes Elisha Cook - the man who fouls up the entire operation by telling his cold-hearted wife (brilliantly played by Marie Windsor) a few small, but important details. The quick dialogue by Jim Thompson - who adapted the Lionel White novel with Kubrick - is as good as it gets. Timothy Carey (Paths of Glory, Killing of a Chinse Bookie) has a small role as a sharp-shooter, Vince Edwards is Windsor’s secret boyfriend, and Coleen Gray is Hayden’s innocent wife. Kubrick replays the heist from the different perspectives of the crew for one of the best set-pieces noir has seen. A classic.
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